November 14, 2011

URL Shorteners


If you are looking to share a web URL a.k.a. web address, you should be aware of "URL Shorteners".  Links can get quite lengthy and there is nothing more difficult than trying to share a URL with someone verbally when it is 50 characters long...or try tweeting in 140 characters when your web address is 70 by itself!  So, what are your options?  Goo.gl is a great service provided by Google which will allow you to shorten your link as well as track the hits the link receives.  Bit.ly is another excellent website where you can shorten your links, share directly to Facebook and Twitter, customize your URL (e.g. bit.ly/techmessages), track statistics and even create link bundles which can be shared with one shortened link.


Now What?

Shortening links is useful when you want to share a website with your class but don't want to leave it up to them to type it in correctly.  This is nice for e-mails as well so your message looks much cleaner when it is sent.  Schools can use URL shorteners to share links with parents without having to provide them with the entire string of characters.  I really like the tracking feature so I can see how many hits a link has gotten and also Bit.ly's feature which lets you bundle links together and share one link for them all.

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